Avishai Baum

Avishai Yusefovich Baum (29 January 1891-3 December 1937) was a General of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War.

Biography
Avishai Yusefovich Baum was born on 29 January 1891 in Vinnitsa, Russian Empire (present-day Vinnytsia, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine) to a family of Ukrainian Jews. Baum took part in the 1905 Revolution protests at the age of 14, and he was imprisoned for a year before being released. Baum's family were victims of pogroms at the hands of the Russian government, and he was dispossessed by the Orthodox Christian Russians. He was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army during World War I, and in 1917 he took his revenge by taking part in the October Revolution against Czar Nicholas II of Russia. He joined the Red Army and rose to the rank of General after fighting off Poland to the west and the White Army to the south. Baum was a trusted commander under Josef Stalin, but he was one of the 90% of Red Army commanders that were to be executed in the Great Purge. On 3 December 1937 he was executed by an NKVD firing squad for "treason".